The Zeitungs-Halle on the Rhine Province

by Frederick Engels

Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 87

Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org

Cologne, August 26. The Berliner Zeitungs-Halle [65] carries
the following paragraph:

"We recently had occasion to mention that the time has come when the
spirit which for so long has held together the old political entities is
gradually vanishing. As regards Austria hardly anyone will call this in
question, but in Prussia, too, the signs of the times confirming our observation
are becoming daily more manifest, and we cannot turn a blind eye to them.
There is at present only one interest capable of tying the various provinces
to the Prussian state, namely, that of developing liberal political institutions
and jointly establishing and promoting a new and free mode of social relations.
Silesia, which is making vigorous advances on the road to political and
social progress, will hardly be happy in Prussia unless Prussia as a state
is entirely adequate to these aspirations. As regards the Province of Saxony
we know only too well that ever since its incorporation into the Prussian
state it has resented it at heart. And as to the Rhineland, surely everybody
will still remember the threats made by the Rhenish deputies prior to March
18, which helped to precipitate the turn of events. There is a growing
spirit of alienation in this province. New evidence of this is provided
in a now rather widely distributed leaflet which contains no mention of
the publisher or place of publication."

The leaflet referred to by the Zeitungs-Halle is presumably known to all
our readers.

What must please us is the view -- which is at last advanced by
at least one Berliner -- that Berlin does not play the role of Paris as
far as either Germany or the Rhineland in particular is concerned. Berlin
is beginning to realize that it cannot govern us, cannot acquire the authority
befitting a capital city. Berlin has amply proved its incompetence during
the indecisive March revolution, during the storming of the armory and
during the recent disturbances. [66] To the irresolution displayed by the
people of Berlin is added a complete lack of talent in all parties. Since
February the whole movement has not produced a single man capable of leading
his party. The spirit in this "capital of the spirit" is indeed very willing
but just as weak as the flesh. The Berliners even had to import their Hansemann,
their Camphausen and their Milde from the Rhine or Silesia. Far from being
a German Paris, Berlin is not even a Prussian Vienna. It is not a metropolis,
it is a "seat of the court".

It is, however, noteworthy, that even in Berlin people are coming
to the conclusion, long widespread in the Rhineland, that German unity
can come about only as a result of the disintegration of the German so-called
great powers. We have never concealed our views on this point. We are not
enraptured with either the past or present glory of Germany, with either
the wars of - independence or the "glorious victories of German arms" in
Lombardy and Schleswig. But if Germany is ever to achieve anything she
must unite, she must become one state in deed as well as in word. And to
bring this about it is necessary above all that there should be "neither
an Austria nor a Prussia". [67] Incidentally, "the spirit" which "for so
long held together" us and the old Prussian provinces was a palpable, crude
spirit; it was the spirit of 15,000 bayonets and a number of cannon. It
was not for nothing that military units of Silesian Poles and Kasubians
were stationed here on the Rhine, and that our young men had to serve in
guards regiments in Berlin. This was done not in order to reconcile us
with the other provinces, but to stir up hatred between the provinces and
to exploit the national enmity between the Germans and Slavs, and the regional
hatred of every petty German province against all the neighboring provinces,
in the interests of patriarchal feudal despotism. Divide et impera!

It is indeed time to put an end to the fictitious role assigned
to the Berliners by "the provinces", i.e., by the junkerdom of the Uckermark
and Further Pomerania, in their panic-stricken declarations, a role which
the Berliners promptly accepted. Berlin is not and will never become the
seat of the revolution, the capital of democracy. Only the imagination
of the knights of Brandenburg, terrified at the prospect of bankruptcy,
the debtor's prison and the lamppost, could ascribe to Berlin such a role,
and only the coquettish vanity of the Berliners could believe that it represented
the provinces. We acknowledge the March revolution, but only for what it
really was. Its greatest shortcoming is that it has not revolutionized
the Berliners.

The Zeitungs-Halle believes that the disintegrating Prussian state
can be cemented by means of liberal institutions. On the contrary. The
more liberal the institutions are, the freer will it be for the heterogeneous
elements to separate, and the clearer will become the necessity of dissociation
and the incompetence of the politicians of all parties in Berlin.

We repeat, the Rhineland by no means objects to remaining together
with the old Prussian provinces within Germany, but trying to compel it
to remain for ever within Prussia, whether it be an absolutist, a constitutional
or a democratic Prussia, is tantamount to making Germany's unity impossible,
tantamount even to losing for Germany -- we express the general attitude
of the people -- a large and beautiful territory by attempting to keep
it for Prussia.